We’re all sitting around the table eating chicken breast, vegetables and japanese rice. The cats are begging.
Alpha: “Aw, give the cats something.”
Miguel: “I’ll give them a knuckle sandwich.”
Alpha: “You have a little thing sticking out the side there, give that to the cat.”
Gamma: “Daddy has a little thing sticking out the front, too. Bwahahahaha!”
Beta: “Bwahahahahaha.”
Alpha: “Bwahahahahaha.”
Miguel: [sigh]

After I saw a man underneath my shopping cart this morning, I knew something had to be done. If it had at least been an actual man, I could have said, “hey, you down there, hand me the kitty litter.”

However, it was a non-existant man. The voice telling me to eat a bishop, okay, that was still funny, managed to work that into a pilot for a sit-com, a new Feral Living spinoff, Demon Shrink. But seeing things, man. It wasn’t a genuine hallucination, it was more like a tired and stressed mind seeing a dark shape (shadows) and jumping to a conclusion (must be a man crammed in underneath your shopping cart, hey, makes sense!).

So I did what any sane person would do in the situation: I went and finally saw “Lord of the Rings” with Beta. Now everyone in the world has seen that movie. We were the last ones. We won a prize.

My favorite detail was how the super-orcs put warpaint on their faces. That tells you a lot about how the orc mind works. Here are creatures, half orc and half something else even worse, born in molten mud in a fiery subterranean place half hell half factory amidst heavily-pierced (with what look like industrial staples) orc blacksmiths pounding out swords on their evil anvils and casting armor and shit; they have faces based I suppose partly on baboons, only worse, with really awful pointy teeth. Black slime drools out of their mouths when they stand there receiving evil instructions from their evil overlord Sauroman or however he spells it. Huge guys, muscles, claws, long black matted hair or dreadlocks, pointy ears, and so on and one says to the other, “Hey, let’s put some white paint on our faces and make ourselves scary-looking.”

I also decided to try getting more sleep today and ease up on the diet for a meal or two (this is me talking again, not the orc).

The Wheetabix is a versatile English breakfast food product.

[Editor's note: the correct spelling of the breakfast cereal is "Weetabix"]
The Wheetabix is of course happy serving as the centerpiece in an old-fashioned still life with flowers.

Or recumbant on a chaise-longe with cello and cat.

The Wheetabix is equally happy with a reclining nude.

Or in a Rousseau-esque jungle scene.

But it is modern as well. Modern like Vincent Van Gogh, here with sunflowers.

Modern like abstract minimalists.

Modern like Louis Wain with his schizophrenic cats.

Modern like Cindy Sherman, and fond of masquerading as other genres, such as dinner.

Modern like the Mirror Project.

Feral Living is pleased to note that Michael O’Connor Clarke is posting again. I Love Me was one of the first blogs I read regularly, and one of the first kind enough to link to Feral Living, which may have been a mistake, because it encouraged me to keep on doing this, and you see what that resulted in.

Look, I’m married to the greatest woman in the world and I just wanted to say, first of all, that the following post has nothing whatsoever to do with Alpha in any way, shape or form. And I’m being serious. It’s just a scene that’s been playing in my head all day that I want to get out and thought maybe writing it down would work.

Anyway. Scene I: at a therapist’s office. During the entire scene, by the way, Alpha is 200 miles away getting a shiatsu massage from a master masseur which leaves her feeling relaxed, vitalized and 15 years younger, not that there’s anything wrong with the age she is.

Therapist: “You say your husband is reluctant to take on everyday responsibilities?”
Woman (not Alpha, who is 200 miles away): “Um, yes.”
Therapist: “And this situation bothers you?”
Woman: “Well, of course, but I’ve tried everything, what can I do to get him to change?”
Therapist: [whispered] “Feed him the flesh of a bishop.”
Woman: “Excuse me?”
Therapist: “I said, you must concentrate on changing the way you react to circumstances, that’s ultimately the only way one can control one’s own circumstances.”
Woman: “But it sounded like something with bishop.”
Therapist: “No, no.”

Scene II, dinner

Husband: “You sure this is chicken? Tastes like pork.”
[cue laughtrack]
Wife: “About the garbage…”
Husband: “No problem, honey, I’ll get to it right after dinner.”
[more laughtrack]

This is the album cover I mentioned. I designed it recently for a local Irish band – a bunch of kids from the local music school. Click on the small image for a larger picture. I’m not mentioning the band’s name here for the usual reasons, but they’re quite good, for classically-trained Austrian kids playing Irish music.

When I was young, I was part of a diverse group of local children who were all less than intensively parented. “Underparented” would not be strictly true, because in my case, at least, my mother did devote all her time to mothering us; and besides, who is to say how much parenting is best? But all of us had absentee fathers to a greater or lesser degree, because fathers sometimes pass away, or leave, or drink, or have jobs that keep them away from home.

So we all hung out with my uncle, the Peasant, as he called himself. He lived alone in an old house across the pasture and ate dinner with us most evenings. He was a window washer and a bachelor until he was 55, when he married a rich widow. Although most of us were grown by then, we still resented losing him.

The original idea for this website springs from the eccentric, feral upbringing we received at his hands. Summers he would take us camping in the mountains, where we would play with fire, and knives, whatever we wanted. He gave us free reign. I suppose our mothers were relieved to be rid of us for a while, and didn’t ask questions. So Feral Living is a tribute to him, in a way.

Although the Peasant had a manual job, he was self-educated and better-read than most people. He was a history buff, especially WWII. He had a meek, self-deprecating demeanor that allowed him to have long conversations with people more stupid than himself, in which he would play a little dumb himself and watch as they grew more and more pompous.

He sometimes even secretly tape-recorded such conversations. He also took a lot of pictures. I have one of the best-documented childhoods I know of.

He was a practical joker as well, and a maker of prank telephone calls. He was an entertaining babysitter – he let us do whatever we wanted. We could tear the house down if we felt like it. He had a banana fight with one of my cousins in a hotel room once, destroying it. I imagine this may have been partly a strategic decision, to keep his babysitting duties to a minimum, but part of the reason was just because he was vibrating with impulsive bullshitting monkey energy.

Even though some of us did have fathers, he was a central male figure in all of our lives, and he formed our characters as much as anyone else. We were fortunate enough to learn that being eccentric is a lot of fun, and that it is liveable; that people are pompous and that we are no exception to that. That it is fun to play with fire, but that things will burn down if you let them.

Many of us, those most strongly affected by him, still retain common character traits. Eccentricity and outsiderness. The habit of naming everything, and nicknaming anything or anyone that already has a name. He named me Miguel.

He also was generous. Although he had no money of his own, he somehow lent me the money for my first two trips to Europe. He lent everyone money, not insisting that they pay him back.

The biggest thing was just that he was always there for a bunch of lonesome kids.

I write about him in the past tense here, but he’s still alive. He’s in his late seventies now, still sharp and as odd as ever. I hope to be able to take the family over to see him this summer. Gamma was a baby last time she saw him. I want her to have memories of him.